Subcommittee to Hold California Field Hearing on Restoring Access to Our Public Lands

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands will hold an Oversight Field Hearing in Sacramento, California, on "Restoring Public Access to the Public's Lands: Issues Impacting Multiple-use on Our National Forests," on Monday, September 19, 2011.

BlueRibbon Coalition Executive Director, Greg Mumm said "We are extremely pleased to see Congress focus on the importance of multiple-use/sustained yield management on public lands." Mumm noted that recently completed management plans on millions of acres of lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service have emphasized a preservationist oriented management policy over the Congressional mandated multiple use policy.

Utah Representative Rob Bishop said; “Utah and other western states including California suffer each year from new and existing federal regulations and mandates that hinder multiple-use of our federal lands and resources. Many of these policies continue to be detrimental to the creation of jobs and the generation of revenue upon which so many communities rely. This is the wrong approach and defies the intent for which our national forests and public lands were created. This hearing will examine the effect of these policies on multiple-use and the subsequent impacts on communities and their local economies.”

California Representative Tom McClintock said; “For generations, the U.S. Forest Service maintained a balanced approach to the management of our forests that assured both healthy forests and a healthy economy. Now, it seems to be following a very different policy of exclusion, expulsion and benign neglect of our forests. These actions evince an ideologically driven hostility to the public’s use of the public’s land – and a clear intention to deny the public the responsible and sustainable use of that land. This important hearing will examine the damage caused by these policies and begin the process to restore Gifford Pinchot’s original vision for the Forest Service: ‘To provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run.”

OutdoorWire, 4x4Wire, JeepWire, TrailTalk, MUIRNet-News, and 4x4Voice are all trademarks and publications of OutdoorWire, Inc. and MUIRNet Consulting. Copyright (c) 1999-2020 OutdoorWire, Inc and MUIRNet Consulting - All Rights Reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without express written permission. You may link freely to this site, but no further use is allowed without the express written permission of the owner of this material. All corporate trademarks are the property of their respective owners.